Twenty years ago, the International Criminal Court (hereinafter ICC or the Court) was established holding the aim of placing victims at the heart of international criminal justice proceedings and delivering justice to them through, among others, reparations. Article 75 of the Rome Statute lays out the reparations regime, and, in practice, court-ordered reparations are a means of delivering such justice. Focusing on Court decisions on reparations, our analysis takes stock of all developments before the ICC and attempts to highlight the mismatch between characteristics inherent to the objectives of international criminal trials such as providing accountability and punishment of the accused and delivering justice for victims of mass crimes—the so-called procedural challenges. We also submit that the Court is facing conceptual challenges, related to an apparent misunderstanding of the various concepts at stake: reparations as such and the various modalities and channels of enforcing them. We conclude that although the ICC’s reparation regime may not be the best reparative response to provide justice to victims in conflict situations affected by mass victimization, we suggest that improving the ICC’s approach includes, at a minimum, tackling these challenges.

This article investigates the approach to reparations of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), using a comparative law perspective, complemented by socio-legal insights. We trace back the development of the reparative frameworks of the ICC and ECCC, and identify the normative bases and political climate underlying the establishment of both courts. Moreover, we scrutinize their case law and implementation practice on reparations, and posit that the initial context of development will not predict how well the courts will fare in practice. Instead, we argue that the openness and flexibility of the courts, to acknowledge when change is needed and adapt to challenges arising during the process of designing and implementing reparations appear to be moreimportant than the initial context. We conclude that in order to make the victims' right to reparation real, the courts' reparative mandates require a deeper reflection on the feasibility of the underlying goals of international criminal justice and a realistic assessment of their performance in practice.

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